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Let's think about DVDs as well.

Readers may recall I posted a comment about DRM on a dvd set that I wanted to play on my laptop......and couldn't. And this is where DRM becomes utterly inane, stupid, foolery....whatever you like. You'll recall perhaps too that I mentioned that it was a recent crime series based in New York and had as its chief players, a writer of crime novels and a gorgeous homicide detective sergeant working as a team - even if unwilling at first. We now own fully legitimate, shop bought copies of seasons 1-4, where each season package consists of several disks.

And now to DRM.....This is where it gets incredible. Season 1 disks will play on my Toshiba HDD player with no trouble but will not play on the laptop, unless I take alternative action. However, from then on, seasons 2-4 inclusive will all play on the laptop without any nefarious activities on my part - put them in the optical drive and away they go. Seasons 2 and 3 will also play on the Toshiba, no problems.

Season 4 disk 1 played perfectly on the Toshiba but disk 2 could not be recognised and the player stated that it was not a recognised dvd........I thought I might have that very rare item: a corrupted dvd........so I put disk 2 into the laptop and it immediately played perfectly........As fortune would have it, I also have a Philips dvd player and again, it played disk 2 perfectly so we were able to watch the episodes. The Toshiba player simply will not play it......

I really am fed up with this nonsense. If I had not by good fortune had two different dvd players (and the laptop), I'd have been tempted to replace the set. As far as I am concerned, this foolery is being caused by DRM actions on the dvds and it is totally to the detriment of legitimate customers.

As I often remark: those that want to engage in criminal copying for profit will do so, no matter what DRM locks are placed on the dvds. DRM's only real effects are to annoy and disadvantage legitimate users. And again I ask: why is it that the implication is always that I am on the verge of committing criminal copying ? I'm fed up to the back teeth.

The first thing is to stop casual users from copying the media for friends (rather than criminals from selling copies), technically an illegal act, but one that most people don't tend to think of as morally objectionable (unlike selling copies). Of course, this is much more of a legitimate concern now than it used to be because "sharing with friends" seems to include posting on the Internet for a lot of people these days.

The second thing it seems designed to do is stop users from buying one copy of something and using it for a variety of devices in different formats. Technically this is completely legal use of a copy, but a lot of companies would seem to prefer that it wasn't possible just the same. The ones that seem to think it's more fair still want to control it through use of DRM'ed copies "in the cloud."

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